WEEK 4 ASSIGNMENT

Week 4 Assignment

WEEK 4 ASSIGNMENT

Introduction

Intellectual property refers to conception of the brain: innovation, fictitious and creative works, cryptogram, names, blueprints and metaphors used in business. Intellectual property is classified into two groups: Industry property, which comprises of patents, business designs, patents and geographic suggestions of source and exclusive rights, which involves artistic and work related to literature such as poems, novels and plays etc. Intellectual property rights refer to the rights given to persons over the creation of their minds. Such rights provide the creator with exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a given period of time (WIPO 2013, p. n.d).

The software industry is a knowledge concentrated industry whose primary production is information, the coded instructions that are used to direct the operations of a computer or a network of computers. Both the inputs and output of software consist of intangibles produced by software innovators. The modern computer software industry is a model of industry where the return to investment of software innovators is heavily inclined by the ownership of intellectual property. These intangibles in software industry are protected through intellectual property rights in form of patents, copyright and trademark (Graham & Mowery 2003, pp. 219-20).

Discussion

Software is a form of intellectual property and creator of the software has certain rights to the ownership of the software. Different rights that are used for protection of intellectual property in terms of software are as follows

Copyright

A copyright is a form of intellectual property rights that protects the outline of expression of a creator against copying. It is la legal concept endorsed by most governments grating the creator of original work exclusive rights to it for a given period of time. Copyright provides the creator with right to stop others from copying their work without the permission of creator.

Copyright is vital right that owner of the software receives after writing or building the software. As a copyright holder of software, the owner receives a sole right to make copies of the software. If someone else will make copies of the software without the permission of the owner of the software he could be sued by the owner of copyright. The holder of copyright for software holds the right to specify how the software can be used, who can use it or modify it and who can make and sell copies of particular software. Copyright protection extends to the specific form in which an idea is expressed. In case of intellectual property rights of software, the copyright law protects the source, code and certain other elements of the software that needs protection from theft of data. Copyright law in relation with software also protects the rights of software developer against indirect copying like unauthorized translation of code into different programming languages. Copyright law with respect to software or any other domain does not include protection against the idea rather it protects the data in a particular form written by software developer (Graham & Mowery 2003, ...